Electronic Music

Electronic Music is made from electronic signals which are converted into sound by loudspeakers.

Where Did It Begin?

In the 1950s, composers in the radio studios at Cologne (Germany) began to experiment in creating music with electronic equipment.

Many other studios soon built up collections of electronic equipment, originally invented to test the radio equipment, and composers began to use these as new instruments with which they could create new works.

Solitaire by Arne Nordheim

Listen to this piece of Electronic Music composed by the Norwegian Arne Nordheim in 1968. Individual electronic tones are looped, layered and combined to create a rich and dramatic sound world with a great sense of depth. (See below for a more detailed investigation of this clip.)

What Does This Music Involve?

By working with electronic oscillators, composers were able to control every detail of the sounds that they created. This allowed them to be very precise and create exactly the type of sound that they planned.

They were able to manipulate the main parameters of sound (pitch, loudness, and duration) with the controls on their electronic devices, and to alter the timbre and character of the sounds that they created, by changing the basic soundwave type and the shape of the sounds over time.

Absolute Control

Starting with the basic building blocks of sound, gives the composer absolute control from the beginning. However, this does mean that the composer must specify every detail about the sound in order to get the sound that they want.

But, working with pure, electronic tones as building blocks, composers of Electronic Music have a much cleaner working process than the messy and experimental world of Musique Concrète. They begin with pure, simple sounds and build them into more complex structures.

Fact

Because they were able to easily create a lot of sounds, many composers used simple rules to help them narrow down the sounds that they wanted to use in their piece.

These rules might involve:

a) Only using a select few sounds.
b) Never using the same sounds next to one another.
c) Leaving it completely up to chance and letting the roll of the dice decide which sound to use next.

Composition Tools

Electronic Music sounds are mostly generated and designed in the way that the composer wants them.

Sometimes manipulations are needed and those commonly used in Electronic Music are:

2. High Frequency Ping

This is a short sound which comes in towards the beginning of the clip. The ping sound is repeated three more times (there are four pings in total). But, when the ping is repeated, it is transposed and changed in pitch.

Changes in Pitch

Changes in Space

Each ping is also panned a different amount, giving a sense of space from left to right. Each ping has a different amount of reverb applied to it, giving a greater sense of depth, from close to distant.

3. Falling Grains

A cloud of very small pitched sounds, which slowly falls in pitch. This granular cloud was created from a few, high pitched, small electronic tones, looped to create an extended granular cloud, and then transposed downwards over time.

Extra

Karlheinz Stockhausen was an important composer of Electronic Music, who worked in the Cologne studios.

Before travelling to Cologne, he worked with Pierre Schaeffer in Paris. Because of this, he combined both the ideas and methods of Musique Concrète with those of Elektronische Musik. Creating works such as ‘Gesang Der Jünglinge’, in which he combined recorded sounds of a boy’s voice (manipulated using transposition, splicing and montage) with electronic tones.

Extra

Further works by Arne Nordheim are available from Rune Grammofon RCD 2002 c&p 1998: